I don't need to read a Cassandra Clare book ever again (The Lost Book of the White)

 

So…  Cassandra Clare. I’m very hit or miss with her work, and to be 100% honest, I’m not the fan that I used to be. For content, today I’m talking about The Lost Book of the White by Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu, which is the second novel in The Eldest Curses, a Magnus and Alec series.

Now for why I’m not the fan I used to be of Cassandra Clare’s work, during my time at university, that’s when I really got into Tumblr, and in my earlier days of Tumblr, the Shadowhunters show was airing. I definitely got a bit bored of Shadowhunters towards the end of the show’s life and I was definitely only watching for Malec (Magnus and Alec) towards the end because I wanted that gay content but didn’t really care about any of the other characters. I’ve read the first six Mortal Instruments books and the first of the Malec books, but other than that, nothing. I’ll also be 100% honest, I’ve fallen off with The Mortal Instruments, but I had this book on my shelf, and figured I should finally read it.

Our blurb says that life is good for Magnus Bane and Alec Lightwood. They’re finally living together, their warlock son, Max, is learning to walk and the streets of New York are peaceful and quiet – as much as they ever were. Until the night that two old acquaintances break in and steal the powerful Book for the White, stabbing Magnus with a strange magical weapon in the process. Now Magnus and Alec will have to drop everything to get the book back. They need to follow the thieves to Shanghai, call some backup and they need a babysitter. In Shanghai, they learn that a much darker threat awaits them. Magnus’s magic is growing unstable and if they can’t stop the demons flooding into the city, they might have to follow them way back to the source – to the very realm of the dead. Can they stop the threat to the world?

We open up on a prologue where Magnus is in 2007 where his warlock friend, Ragnor Fell, says that Sammael is after him, so he’s going to fake his own death, so that Sammael can’t come back and use him to get back to his full power and get back with Lilith – his demon wife. Magnus is looking for The Book of the White. The book then jumps to 2010 in New York, where Magnus is living with Alec and has his infant son, and someone is trying to break into his apartment, fun fun times. It’s Alec coming home after a demon ate his keys. Then Ragnor comes back with someone called Shinyun, they steal the book of the white, and Ragnor is seemingly serving Sammael.

In chapter two, Magnus has been stabbed and the two of them track Ragnor and Shinyun to Shanghai. Catarina, this other warlock ends up telling Alec that Magnus is like a cat in that he refuses to let other people see how much pain he’s in but that she worries about him less since he’s with Alec. That was quite sweet, it felt like the first bit of humility in the book. I remember Magnus being very snarky from the show, so it was nice to see that bit, especially since Magnus had been all snark up to that point. I’m not saying his snarkiness is a bad thing, it's definitely not. I just didn’t want him to be all snark – character depth, that’s what I was after. Still, end of chapter two is the gang from the main books, Clary, Jace, Isabelle, and Simon all turning up, saying they’ll go to Shanghai as well.

There’s this section in the third chapter I really enjoyed. Magnus and Alec are dropping Max off with Alec’s mother, Maryse, and they’re handing the baby stuff, like baby books, off to her and the second-in-command is just there, very stoic. I liked the blending of the human in the fantasy world. Like they full on talk about Where the Wild Things Are, and another book called Trucks. This sort of vibe pops up towards the end of the book when Magnus and Alec return home, and you get a bit more of the domesticity. I really liked it, and honestly? I think part of where this book’s strength was happened to be in the more action-free sections of the book, where this immortal warlock has to do something so regular as being a father. Where he and Alec were just living their lives.

You know how you’re generally meant to use one dialogue tag per bit of dialogue, and if you want a different tag, start a new line even if the same person is speaking? Yeah, this book had two tags for one chunk on page 2. And there were a more throughout the book. It was a recurring thing that popped up. I know that certain rules of grammar are open for interpretation, but I feel like things like dialogue tags are meant to function one way only. Also, there were noticeable instances of showing instead of telling throughout the book. Maybe it was for the sake of time, but the book would often just tell us how characters were feeling in a single sentence before moving on to the next thing.

The weapon Magnus gets stabbed with, Svefnthorn, I think that was (to me) the most interesting plot point in the book. Shinyun, the one who stabs Magnus, is the one who gives most of the actual good information about it. Sure, the Shadowhunters find out facts about it, but the way Shinyun talks about it was the best part. She mentions that Magnus would keep feeling better and better until he felt nothing. She did an amazing job of making it seem like this horrendous thing that was looming. It was also the fact that she was so obsessed with it, and its power, that had me hoping it would culminate into some huge thing at the end. It kind of did, so I sort of got what I wanted, but at the same time it didn’t. I’m going to talk about the ending next, so my proper thoughts will follow. And after having had time to sit with it, I wish Magnus getting stabbed with the Svenfnthorn had been the main plot of this book, like he and Alec were settling down, but this forces them into some action they don’t want to be in.

But the ending… The ending was not good. I could liken the ending of this book to an RPG game. You know how like you and your party go through all the trials and tribulations before reaching the final area where the big bad demon boss creature is? Well, this book sort of took that approach, and there definitely were bits that were what I would have expected, but then it all just ended so abruptly, and I found myself having to go back and re-read what I had previously read, because I thought I had missed something. The issue was that I hadn’t missed anything, I re-read the passage before the end and definitely hadn’t. The ending was just like that, providing little resolution where Clare and Chu were clearly setting up for the next book. I understand that’s a very common thing to do in fantasy, I was just expecting resolution from this book since I got it from the first book in The Eldest Curses. The ending of this book happened, and I was sat there like, “Oh, was that it?”, left feeling both underwhelmed and unsatisfied.

I do want to take a moment to expand on something I said earlier, about how I’ve fallen off with The Mortal Instruments. That is a true statement as I really don’t care about it, or any of Clare’s other books, to be honest. After I fell off The Mortal Instruments, I still did like Malec, so I was excited to get Malec-centric books and figured that I’d read them. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy the first of The Eldest Curses since it was very Malec-centric. My problem with this book was that even though it was Malec-centric, or supposed to be, it didn’t feel like it. I say that because even though most of the book is supposed to be Malec retrieving the stolen book of the white, that becomes almost secondary to the original Mortal Instruments characters (Clary, Jace, Isabelle, and Simon) all basically going on a trip, and then trying to save Simon. This might sound mean, but they took away from what I was wanting out of this book. I was wanting Malec, their lives, how having a child affected them too, but that ended up being little more than a few conversations.

I will say, I definitely read this book just to read it and so it wasn’t just left unread on my shelf. And even with that, that doesn’t take away from the positives and negatives I had with the book. The bits of Magnus and Alec we got of them being a family with their son, I really enjoyed. The bits surrounding Shinyun and the Svefnthorn were really good as well. It’s just a shame about how the plot just kind of wandered, never really going anywhere, and that the ending was so disappointing. At this point, with how this book went, I have no interest in finishing The Eldest Curses should any other books be released in the series.

Okay, bye!